Navigating a Risky Beat: Modern Music Journalists Face the Risk of Not Returning Home
My work is piling up. I have deadlines that have already passed. I should be sending resumes out, folding laundry, and calling my building manager about my broken kitchen faucet. Ever since the Hamas attack on an Israeli music festival this past Saturday, October 7th, and the ensuing destruction we’ve seen since that’s been no less than apocalyptic, my productivity has been cut in half. Feeling flashbacks in time to the height of the BLM movement 3 years ago, every time I refresh a page or tab another horrific image or news bulletin flashes in front of my tired eyes. Folks arguing in comments, unfollowing each other, the amount of division I’ve seen on social media is as mentally exhausting to process as it is enlightening to witness. And by that I mean, I haven’t more clearly seen where folks stand since BLM. And since then, I’ve additionally been keenly aware of the dangers in my field of work as a music journalist, because I’ve had every reason from Fyre Festival to AstroWorld, and now even Burning Man, to feel like everything seems like a risk nowadays, with much validity. From active shooter training to various self defense courses, I’ve scanned venues for exits, windows, hiding places, and every way, shape, and form that I could possibly escape or run away.After the past week, however, I’m beginning to reconsider what it means to actually be a journalist. And the only thing I could really deduce is: the difference between a writer and a journalist is bravery. Now, I say this in a nuanced way because I am in no way insinuating that those who write or consider themselves to be writers aren’t brave, have no capacity to be brave, or have never displayed bravery or courage before. That’s not what I’m saying here, at all. But in times like these, times of darkness and war, in times with terrifyingly uncertain futures, it is not the “writers” on the front lines of it all. It’s the journalists — and they are brave. Some are as brave as the soldiers.
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